The New Year is fast approaching, and with it comes a familiar surge of goals, motivation, and optimism. For athletes considering their first triathlon – or for those who’ve been in the sport for a while but haven’t yet taken the leap into personal coaching – a common question emerges: Is investing in a coach for 2026 really worth it?
In the AI era, that question has become more nuanced. With high-quality training advice now freely available through tools like ChatGPT and other platforms, athletes are increasingly weighing what a human coach can offer versus what technology can already provide.
This article is meant to help you think through that decision – where AI can genuinely support your training, where a real human coach still adds unique value, and how choosing the right approach could help set the stage for a strong and rewarding 2026 season.
What AI Now Offers
As AI continues to evolve, it’s becoming part of everyday life. It’s no surprise, then, that it has also made its way into endurance sports and triathlon training.
Today, AI tools can provide structured workouts, sample training plans, race-day strategies, and answers to highly specific questions, often instantly and at no cost. Athletes can ask for advice on pacing, fueling, strength training, recovery, or how to adjust a week when life gets in the way. For many, this level of access would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
What’s particularly interesting is that even elite athletes are beginning to experiment with these tools. Professional triathlete Lionel Sanders has openly discussed using ChatGPT to analyze training data and to help guide his recovery from injury in a recent YouTube video. He’s clear, however, that he treats AI as a complement, not a replacement – something to consult, question, and learn from rather than follow blindly. Still, he highlights the value AI can bring, and suggests that the best athletes and coaches will increasingly integrate these tools as part of their process.
Anecdotally, it’s believed that several top athletes are already leaning on AI behind the scenes, even if few have spoken about it publicly. Whether at the professional or age-group level, AI is quickly becoming another tool in the training toolbox, raising an important question: If technology can already do so much, where does a human coach still fit?
Where AI Still Falls Short
While AI has become an impressive and increasingly useful training tool, there are still some foundational aspects of coaching that technology is nowhere near replacing, if it ever will.
1. Experienced Human Judgment Beyond the Data
AI is excellent at working with data, but it’s still limited by the data it’s given. An experienced human coach brings something fundamentally different: the ability to interpret information in context, and to override the numbers when they don’t tell the full story.
Great coaches know their athletes deeply. They understand patterns across months and years, recognize subtle warning signs of fatigue or stagnation, and appreciate how training stress interacts with work, family life, sleep, and mental state. This kind of judgment isn’t purely analytical – it’s intuitive, built through experience, observation, and countless decision points that can’t be easily codified.
In moments where the metrics say one thing but the athlete’s body or mindset suggests another, a seasoned coach can make nuanced calls that protect long-term progress, which is something AI, at least for now, struggles to do reliably.
2. Technique
In highly technical sports like swimming, AI can now analyze video and flag movement inefficiencies, which is a powerful tool for refining form. But having a coach on deck still offers something AI can’t fully replicate. Coaches interpret technique in the context of your overall training, history, and goals, prioritize which adjustments matter most, and provide real-time cues, demonstrations, and encouragement. This combination of insight, intuition, and hands-on guidance helps accelerate improvement and prevents bad habits from forming in ways that AI alone cannot.
3. The Human Element: Motivation, Connection, and Accountability
Triathlon training isn’t just about executing workouts; it’s about showing up consistently over months and years. For many athletes, this is where the human element of coaching becomes invaluable.
A coach can offer encouragement when motivation dips, perspective when expectations run high, and accountability when life makes it easy to skip sessions or cut corners. Beyond that, coaching relationships often create a sense of shared purpose – someone who is genuinely invested in your goals, your progress, and your setbacks.
Many coaches also foster connection beyond the one-on-one relationship, linking athletes to squads, training groups, or broader communities. These environments aren’t just “feel-good extras.” They often fuel real performance breakthroughs by building energy, momentum, and enjoyment.
In sum, AI can inform and guide, but it doesn’t care if you show up on a cold morning, or celebrate the quiet wins along the way. And without having trained or raced itself, it can’t truly relate to the athlete experience.
Making the Call for the Season Ahead
With 2026 just around the corner, it’s about choosing the right support for the season you want to have. AI can be a powerful tool, but if you’re looking for those additional “human factors” (and expertise!), investing in a coach may be the catalyst that turns 2026 into your strongest and most rewarding year yet.
The post Should You Invest in a Coach For Your 2026 Triathlon Season? (Or Can AI Cover It?) appeared first on Triathlon Magazine Canada.